yankeedoodle_dr | (no subject)

(no subject)

"Damn," says Hawkeye, "damn, damn, damn!"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that he has not just stepped into the scrub room, that the piece of furniture he just threw his surgical cap down on wasn't the sink.

(He's in short-sleeved scrubs, red down his front and up his bare arms from the wrist to the elbow. He's moving slow and a little unsteady. His face is lined with the kind of exhaustion that only hits after the second, third, and fourth winds have come and gone.)

One bloody arm wrapped around himself, his head hanging: "Damn."

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Simon's sitting at a table not far from the door; at the sound of the familiar voice, he glances up.

And then he's out of the chair and around the table, and hurrying closer.

Most of the time, Hawkeye Pierce is the voice of levity in the O.R. He sings, he dances, he does a fine bowel resection. He moves nimbly from case to case, getting out of a patient as fast as he gets out of the gloves stained with their blood; he sips orange juice through a straw and makes eyes at the nurse who pulls down his mask. He provides dialogue for movies when the piped-in sound fails. But sometimes -- sometimes.

He sinks down -- and even that is slow and creaky -- in the nearest chair, and he runs an absent hand through his hair.

Quietly: "Damn."

"Hawkeye?"

It's low; he's close enough to speak to his ears only.

"What's happened?"

After a moment, it registers that he's been spoken too. Hawkeye's hand falls away from his head; he glances up. His eyes are sunk in, red-rimmed with exhaustion.

He shoots Simon a long look, and then he says, "Somebody up at Division decided they just had to have a particular piece of real estate." It's too raw and bitter to be patter.

Simon's lips press together.

Very quietly: "Are you all right?"

"Oh, I'm peachy," says Hawkeye, and his smile is razor-sharp. "Give me a minute and I'm gonna start whistling Dixie here."

He looks levelly at the other doctor for a moment.

And then says, "I think possibly anaesthetic is indicated," and waves at a passing waitrat.

"Keep me from singing," he says, with an oh, you sort of a point at Simon. "Wise decision."

With the gesture, he notices his forearm. He looks at it for a long moment, his expression inscrutable and eerily flat.

Hawkeye takes the hem of the scrub top and starts wiping the blood from his arms.

Simon bends and murmurs a few words to the waitrat. It nods, and darts off.

To return a moment later bearing a tray with a bottle of good Scotch, two glasses, a small covered ice bucket, and a stack of warm damp washcloths.

For a moment, Hawkeye's still using his scrubs -- but the rat's chitter gets through. He looks up, and he pours a drink with one hand (perfectly steady, not one drop spilled or sloshed) and picks up a washcloth with the other.

He slides the bottle over toward Simon and takes a long, long drink from his glass.

When he sets the glass down on the table, hard, his voice is raspy, but a touch more emotive. "Thanks," he says, and he cleans the most recent of the blood off his skin.

He pours a measure into his own glass, takes a small sip.

(Only one of them needs to get drunk, right now.)

"How long were you on duty?" he asks quietly.

"Oh, I don't know," he says, faux-lightly, tossing the bloody cloth aside and picking up another. "I lost count somewhere between hour ten and dead patient number two."

Even accustomed as he's become to Hawkeye's flippancy, so like Wash's, in times of strong emotion -- even with Hawkeye's undeniable pain staring him in the face -- it's hard for him not to react badly to that.

He manages.

"If you want to talk about it," he offers after a moment.

The fight goes out of Hawkeye, his shoulders falling lower than their habitual slump.

"Two-hundred and eighty-nine casualties in seventeen hours," he says (recites), and he gives up on his forearms as a lost cause, pitching the red washcloth into the center of the table. He folds his arms on the table and leans, resting most of his weight on them.

"Forty-six amputated limbs, thirty-five concussions, fourteen bowel resections, eleven splenectomies, nine removed kidneys, one open heart massage, and a partridge in a pear tree."

The reference to the partridge bewilders him a little, but he lets it pass.

Hushed: "How many of you were there?"

"Surgeons? Four."

He scrubs a hand across his face; seems to suddenly remember the drink at his elbow. He picks it up. "Three and a half, if we're being honest. Somebody's got to keep an eye on Burns."

Burns; Hawkeye's mentioned that name before. I'd take you over fifty of Frank Burns in a heartbeat, he said.

"Réncí de Fózŭ," he breathes. "It sounds like a nightmare."

After a long drink, Hawkeye lets his mouth curve into a mirthless smile. "Sounds about right."

"I'm sorry," he says steadily; it's sympathy, not apology.

"What a coincidence -- me too." He pours himself another drink (still perfectly steady, precise in his movements; a surgeon's hands), and he salutes Simon with it. "But hey, you're better company than the woman I saw when I came through last time after a marathon session." He drinks.

His voice is outwardly as calm as his hands, but there's more than a hint of unsteadiness under it. He still isn't sure if he dreamed that entire conversation; if it was sleep deprivation and guilt and going nuts after being in Korea so long.

"Who was that?"

He figures Hawkeye wouldn't have brought it up if he didn't want to talk about it; and if he's wrong, he has every confidence in the man's ability to change the subject.

Absently, he takes another sip of his drink.

He smiles sharply. "She called herself Death."

He was pretty damn convinced, at the time.

Simon goes very still.

After a long beat he swallows, and slowly lowers his glass.

Hawkeye chuckles, low.

"Crazy, right?"

"Was she ... very pale? With black hair? Wearing a silver ankh around her neck?"

His hand comes up, unconsciously tracing the shape of the symbol on his own chest.